Share this Story

Tribal Leaders Support Keith Harper With Letter to Congress

ICTMN Staff

6/21/13

Tribal leaders Jeff Grubbe, chairman, Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians; Leonard Forsman, chairman, Suquamish Tribe; Rodney A. Butler, chairman, Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation; Louis Manuel Jr., chairman,Ak-Chin Indian Community; George Rivera, governor, Pueblo of Pojoaque have written a letter in support of the Administration’s nomination of Keith Harper as the United States Representative to the United Nations Human Rights Council. The letter is as follows:

Friends,

It is with great pleasure and pride that we recognize Keith Harper, an enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, whom President Barack Obama has nominated to be the United States Representative to the United Nations Human Rights Council, with the rank of Ambassador. This is a position that no member of a federally recognized Tribe has ever held and continues to show the respect this administration has for inclusion of Native Americans at the highest levels of public service. While Keith’s nomination is historic, it is not necessarily unexpected for the Obama Administration. That is because President Obama has demonstrated in word and deed that he will seek out the most qualified person for a job, regardless of race, gender, or sexual orientation.

Keith is an attorney who has worked tirelessly on behalf of Tribes and Native people for his entire career and will bring this perspective and experience to his work on behalf of human rights on a global scale. He has served as a judge for several tribal courts taught as an adjunct professor for several law schools and served as an advisor to Tribes and tribal members as an attorney. In that role, he has fought for religious freedom and to protect sacred sites, worked diligently to remedy trust account mismanagement. In addition to his work on Native American legal issues he is experienced in the issues that he will be called upon to represent the interests of the United States and victims of Human Rights abuses around the world. This has included assisting in representing the National Congress of American Indians in its negotiations with the United Nations regarding the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Keith is universally recognized as one of the preeminent lawyers in the U.S. He was elected as a member of the American Law Institute (2012), received the Native American Bar Association of D.C. Award for Significant Contributions to Indian Law and Policy (2012), was selected as a “Lawdragon 500” (top 500 lawyers in the United States) (2010), was named one of 50 “Most Influential Minority Lawyers in America” by the National Law Journal (5/26/08), was named one of fourteen “Rainmakers” nationwide by Diversity & The Bar Magazine (11/2008), was recognized by the Third National People of Color Legal Scholarship Conference for Achievements and Commitment to Justice (2010), was listed in Chambers USA: America's Leading Lawyers for Business (2009-2012), was recognized in The Best Lawyers in America® (2009-2013), and was listed as a Washington D.C. "Super Lawyer" by Super Lawyers magazine (2010, 2012-2013).

The President has taken note of Keith’s long, distinguished career and has nominated him based on it for this historic position. Keith’s experience will serve him well in representing the U.S. and all of its Tribal Nations at the United Nations. Again, we hope you will join us in helping to shatter the glass ceiling for Natives at the Ambassador level by calling for Keith’s immediate confirmation by the U.S. Senate.

Respectfully yours,

Jeff Grubbe, chairman, Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians

Leonard Forsman, chairman, Suquamish Tribe

Rodney A. Butler, chairman, Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation

Louis Manuel Jr., chairman, Ak-Chin Indian Community

George Rivera, governor, Pueblo of Pojoaque

You need to be logged in in order to post commentsPlease use the log in option at the bottom of this page

He's a bought BIA red man, now, like Red Cloud was to the Tetuwans' like the rest of them, that all need to be jail for committing genocide on their own kind! That sold out his people, for political money, prestige, influences in the systematic institutional construct of indigenous repression and oppression and we traditional peoples know about Mr. harper traitor spy for the U.S. If you support this man, your not anything but a gatekeeper of genocide nationalist traitor, to our culturally, indigenous ways of life given to us by God freely, to all ancestors, elders, women, men, children, earth and all living things'! He and others will go to hell for their continual U.S. Political Indian Genocidal Policies of legalized, Americanized, white imperialist nationalized murder, persecution, oppression, repression, and complete annihilation through colonial and imperialist domination to assimilation, degradation, abandonment, neglect, racism, hatred, indigenous sovereign traditional government's who was consecrated and given this land thousands of years before white European contact! He's a "Black Heart"! Evil!!!!! Anti-Christ!!!! Like his friends the U.S.!
Wanbli 2013

BIA crooked and thieving lawyer, that needs to be in jail, and banished from his peoples, for stealing money from his own race that are suffering under the political ethnic cleansing policies, laws, regulations that are systematic IRA Tribal Corporate Institution job to manage THIS IRA CONSTRUCT OF INSTITUTIONALIZED GENOCIDE for the U.S....! Now, he get HIS REDWARD FOR BEING A GATEKEEPER FOR THE U.S. TO KILL, STEAL AND DESTORY THE REST OF WHAT THEY DIDNT VIOLENTLY AND ILLEGALLY STOLEN FROM OUR OLD ONES, THAT DIED AT THE HANDS OF THESE BLOODED EVIL WHITE U.S. LEADERS, GETS a POSITION AS A HUMAN RIGHT FIGHTER FOR THE U.S. AND appointment on the human rights counsel, WOW, HOW STUPID, WEAK, Depraved, twisted, perverted of truth and filthy rich and evil CAN PEOPLE GET! To, authentic, sovereign, independent red indigenous governments, his nothing, he and other betrayers, because of the rewards of the oppressor, the U.S., and complicit the crime of genocide are condemn already by God and all Humanity to live in hell for all eternity....; because these kind of people really think they can out smart the Christ, God Creator! He and his kind of hang around the fort Indians that murder their own for money and will go to the white mans hell!!!!!